When he was on the edge, when his crown was shaking, and he had to go into a crucial battle without his first star, the champion once again showed his winning character.
Boston survived New York's first game, the Celtics, without the injured Jayson Tatum (who finished the season), celebrated 127:102, reduced the Eastern Conference semifinals to 3:2 and will now fight in Madison Square Garden to bring the series back to TD Garden.
"Before the Celtics took the court without their biggest star on a night they had to win, coach Joe Mazula asked his players to give it their all to win this one game. And they did - the reigning NBA champions earned another chance to extend their season," the website of the world's strongest basketball league says.
And, when his guys are having their night, there's hardly any team that can stop them - that was the case this time, and no matter how hard the Knicks tried, they could hardly match a team that made 22 three-pointers.
Of those, Derrick White was accurate seven times from outside the 7,24 line, finishing the game with 34 points - he was followed by Jaylen Brown on the winning team with 26 points and 12 assists.
"It's tough when you're without a player like Tatum, but we have a lot of players who are extremely competitive and we didn't want our season to end tonight," White said.
Boston is trying to become just the 14th team in NBA history to come back from a 3-1 series deficit - out of 294 total attempts.
For the Knicks, Josh Hart scored 24 points and Jaylen Brunson added 22 points.
And while the champion is alive, Golden State failed to extend the series - the great Minnesota ended the story with a 4:1 win and advanced to the Western Conference finals for the second year in a row.
Julius Randle continued his great performances, once again leading the Wolves with 29 points. Anthony Edwards had 22 points and 12 rebounds, Rudy Gobert had 17 points, Mike Conley had 16...
For the "Warriors", who are obviously struggling without Steph Curry, Brandon Podzemski with 28 and Jonathan Cumming with 26 points were better than the others.
Minnesota now awaits Oklahoma or Denver in the finals, in a series in which the Thunder lead 3:2.
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